A Miami City Commission Is Threatening To Shut Down The Biggest Rap Music Festival Of The Year

When the full lineup for this year’s Rolling Loud music festival was announced a few months back, hip-hop fans could hardly believe the names that the organizers had assembled for the three-day weekend. Kendrick Lamar was the big get up top, just a few weeks removed from releasing his next album. Below him, Future and Lil Wayne. Underneath those names Run The Jewels, Young Thug, Miaos, Lil Uzi Vert, as well as Kevin Gates and Kodak Black — assuming their legal issues are resolved in time. Now, the fate of the eye-popping festival has been thrown into serious doubt.

According to the Miami Herald, the board that’s responsible for governing Bayfront Park where Rolling Loud is set to take place next month is meeting on Tuesday to decide whether or not to pull the plug on the festival. The vote is taking place at the request of board member Frank Carollo who only just found out about Rolling Loud recently. He was alerted when police informed him that 40,000 people were expected to show up. He argued that executive director Timothy Schmand couldn’t sign the festival contract without the board’s approval

“We have to do the show. If not we’re going to get sued,” Carollo said during a board meeting last month. “They’re advertising already and selling tickets for this event.”

A spokesman for the company hosting the event, Brian Andrews, told the Herald that, “We have a deal. We have an agreement. We were told we were good to go and we’re acting on that. Adding, “We want to be good neighbors and we want to be part of the downtown Miami scene for years to come, not just a one-hit wonder.”

Bayfront Park has a continuing partnership with Live Nation and regularly plays host to other major musical events like Ultra, one of the biggest EDM festival in the world, along with Pitbull’s New Year’s Revolution and later this month, the Kaya Music Festival.

Despite Carollo’s call for a vote on the matter, Rolling Loud organizers are confident they are well within the rules to proceed with the festival. “We’re doing everything we were requested to do,” Andrews said.